GOP Criticizes Davis’ Choice of PR Aides

Republican legislative leaders Monday blasted Gov. Gray Davis’ decision to spend $30,000 a month in taxpayer money to retain communications consultants known for their highly partisan work.

Labeling consultants Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane as “cut-throat,” Senate GOP leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga and Assembly Republican leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks said in a letter to Davis that the hiring “undermines the assertions you have made both publicly and privately throughout this crisis.”

Davis announced Friday that he retained the duo and that the state will pay them a combined $30,000 a month for at least the next six months.

“We’re not going to support the hiring of political hacks on government payroll,” Brulte said in an interview. “Lehane and Fabiani are very talented. The issue is which payroll is appropriate. . . . These are political opposition research attack dogs. If the governor wants them, he ought to pay for them with his $30-million political war chest.”

Some consumer advocates also criticized the move, citing the consultants’ work on behalf of Southern California Edison. In their private consulting business, Fabiani and Lehane are working to win over public and political support for Davis’ $3.5-billion plan to rescue Edison from its financial difficulties. Legislation embodying aspects of the deal is pending in Sacramento.

On Monday, Brulte and Cox also complained about the consultants’ dual role.

“California taxpayers should not be asked to finance political consultants or individuals who have a vested business interest with the state,” the letter said.

Fabiani and Lehane had worked in the Clinton administration, and in Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign, where they gained a reputation as attack-oriented operatives. Lehane on Monday defended the governor’s decision to use tax money to pay their fees, saying government often hires outside experts and that he and Fabiani will “serve as communications advisors to help the governor fight against these generators.”

“The Republicans,” Lehane added, “ought to be spending time writing letters to George W. Bush to get him to stop the Texas generators from gouging California. . . . That is the real issue here.”

Davis, meanwhile, returned to California on Monday after a weekend of fund-raisers. He was in Texas on Saturday for a Dallas event that had been scheduled for April 11. It was postponed when Pacific Gas & Electric filed for bankruptcy protection.

“There is a very large fund-raising base for Democrats in Texas,” Davis’ campaign strategist, Garry South, said of the state that is home to some of the generators that Davis has criticized.

Davis traveled to Chicago for another fund-raiser Sunday, then met Monday with city officials to discuss how Chicago deals with electrical blackouts.

After blackouts crippled downtown Chicago in the summer of 1999, Mayor Richard M. Daley demanded that the city’s electricity provider, Commonwealth Edison, give advance notice of power cuts. Customers now sometimes receive warnings two or three days in advance.

Davis emerged from the meeting saying “the utilities have got to tell us in advance when they’re going to have a planned blackout.”

It was not, however, readily apparent how Chicago’s solutions would translate to California, because its electrical problems are vastly different. Rather than suffering a shortage of electricity throughout the grid like California, Chicago has the more microcosmic ills of an aging system--an obsolete transformer going down, for example, leaving several city blocks in the dark until workers can fix it.

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Times staff writer Eric Slater contributed to this story.